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Presidential or Parliamentary Democra...
The essays presented in his new book, Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy in Kenya, underpin the two basic recommendations that he made to the Building Bridges Initiative. They amplify, illustrate and justify in greater detail the need for Kenya to introduce constitutional reforms at this stage in favour of parliamentary government (as opposed to the current presidential system), and proportional representation in the election of legislators at all levels.
On Kenya specifically, the essays touch repeatedly on its immediate post-independence experience that saw the elimination, as elsewhere in Africa, of parliamentary government and its replacement by an autocratic presidentialism, the resistance to one-party rule in the 1990s, the betrayals after the 2002 General Election that were won by Narc, and the electoral crisis thereafter. Lessons in favour of the two basic constitutional reforms are drawn from that diversity of experiences, and theories.
Prof Nyong’o is both a statesman and an intellectual. That is a rare combination of skills in Kenya today compared with where the country (and Africa generally) was in the immediate post-independence period. In those days, Africans debated their most fundamental political and economic development policies against the backdrop of the contours of thought charted by their leaders in government or out of it. One thinks of Tom J. Mboya, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkurumah, Leopold Senghor, Dunduzu Chisiza, Frantz Fanon and many others. It became normal for the first generation of African leaders to commit their thought and policy goals to paper and to invite debate.
The goals of African independence, African identity, national unity, African socialism, strategies of achieving pan-African unity, economic development, inequality, non-alignment in international affairs — all these were subjected to vigorous public debate.
These essays should strengthen the public debate on constitutional reforms now underway in Kenya. In that context, one of the ideas I have fully shared for long with Prof Nyong’o is that of the need to replace the presidential system of government with a parliamentary one because the latter is better suited to an ethnically polarised society like ours. A parliamentary system is no panacea, as he states at one point, but it is far better suited to our politics than the highly divisive majoritarian-based presidentialism.
Mwakenya The Unfinished Revolution by...
Mwakenya: The Unfinished Revolution is a 440 page book divided into six parts after the Preface and Introduction. Part One deals with the birth of the Kenyan anti-imperialist underground move- ment in the mid-1970s around the time of the brutal and grisly murder of the populist parliamentarian JM Kariuki by assassins widely believed to be working at the behest of President Jomo Kenyatta.
Drawing its inspiration and legacy from the Mau Mau anti-imperialist struggle of the 1950s, the December Twelve Movement (DTM) derived its name from the date Kenya achieved its flag independence in actually the date when the freedom aspirations of Kenyans were betrayed and neocolonialism ushered in.
Maina informs his readers that DTM in turn was the child of the clandestine Workers' Party of Kenya. The fledgling underground movement took an anti-imperialist, pro-socialist stance--ideology anchored in Marxism-Leninism Maoist thought.
The rest of the sections are taken up by detailed narrative as well as a very frank analysis and critique of the later history of the movement when, according to Maina, it was taken over by what he refers to as "opportunist, sectarians and ultra-leftists" who later transformed it into Mwakenya with at first disastrous consequences.
The author chronicles the inner party debate, struggle and rectification, which later led to the expulsion of the "liquid- ationist Dar clique". It's worth reading and re-reading the Part One of the book because it appeared a distinct departure and a fresh gust of air from Maina's previous public views on Mwakenya--especially his last major work, "History of Resistance In Kenya, 1890-2002, where to many Kenyan leftists and observers outside the movement, Maina appeared to endorse some of Mwakenya's gregarious errors through silence.
In conclusion, Maina is one of Kenya's foremost historians, one of Kenya's prominent organic intellectuals, one of Kenya's Marxist scholars. He was abducted from Kenyatta University in 1982, interrogated, humiliated and tortured by Kenya's state agents before being hauled to a Kangaroo court on trumped up charges and later flung to dungeons of Kamiti and Naivasha penitentiaries. He was released in 1988.
Kenya: A Prison Notebook by Maina wa ...
Brief Summary
Maina wa Kinyatti is one of Kenya’s progressive historians. In June 1982, he was arrested by the Kenyan authoritarian regime, charged with possession of seditious literature and imprisoned.
He suffered for six-and-a-half years in the hands of his brutal captors. He was repeatedly held in solitary confinement and was constantly insulted and beaten.
He was tortured by vermin, untreated diseases, hunger and loneliness. But he remained defiant, his courage and spirit unbroken.
A Railway to Nowhere The Building of ...
Mervyn Hill made a significant contribution to East African studies in his history of the Kenya and Uganda Railway from its conception to the creation of East African Railways and Harbours in 1948. Commissioned in 1942 as a 'plain story' of 'the development of the railway' and published in 1949, 'Permanent Way' has long proved a boon to those interested in the history of Kenya and Uganda.
Hill was however at a great disadvantage when writing the official history, most notably because the operation of the 50-year rule prevented him from consulting official documents in the Public Record Office and elsewhere, with the result that he was largely dependent on material published in Parliamentary Command papers.
Two other serious drawbacks were that war conditions restricted his sources to published works and other material available in East Africa at the time and that many of the books and articles which authors now have access to had yet to be written. The Railway to Nowhere does not suffer from these disadvantages and provides a well-researched, authoritative account coupled with a pictorial appreciation of the construction of the railway in the early years of its operation.
There is no doubt that the construction of the railway was a triumph of human endeavour and resolution over the most daunting obstacles and setbacks: the vision and tenacity of the British government in the face of parliamentary, press and Treasury opposition and criticism; the steadfast leadership of Sir George Whitehouse in coping with an often querulous Foreign Office Committee, and overcoming a series of administrative engineering and personal problems; the inventiveness and skill of surveyor engineers when tackling exceptional professional challenges and the hardiness shown by the working gangs, of all races, in carrying on under adverse conditions of climate and terrain.
Its Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong
It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.
When Michela Wrong's Kenyan friend John Githongo appeared one morning on the doorstep of her London flat, it was clear something had gone very wrong in a country regarded until then as one of Africa's few budding success stories.
John's tale is the story of how a brave man came to make a lonely decision with huge ramification
The Kenyatta Succession by Joseph Kar...
The Kenyatta Succession by Joseph Karimi & Philip Ochieng
On the day Mzee Jomo Kenyatta died at Mombasa State House, Coast provincial intelligence officer Bart Kibati received a phone call from the PC Eliud Mahihu.
The administrator relayed the sad news to the sleuth and then went ahead to ask him to look for a coffin in which they would transport the head of state’s body to Nairobi. A Kenya Air Force plane was on standby.
Kibati, well aware that if he was seen buying a coffin tongues would start wagging, decided to pull a trick out of his cloak and dagger trade’s rule book. He bought not only one but three coffin - including one for a child for a good measure.
The retired spy chief reveals in his tell-all biography ‘Memoirs of a Spymaster’ that this was not the first time he was involving himself in subterfuge following a high profile death.
Just under a decade earlier he was the provincial director of intelligence when the celebrated Cabinet minister Tom Mboya was assassinated. On the day Mboya’s body was passing through Nakuru, Kibati came up with a hearse decoy.
Seasons of Hope by David Musila
A teacher, a politician, an administrator, above all a gentle human being who focused on the best for his country, Honorable David Musila, a former senator, has been a dedicated Kenyan throughout his life and continues to be so.
The autobiography, Seasons of Hope – Memoirs of David Musila, is a book full of hopes; it has a capacity to restore faith. An amazingly inspirational story of a person who has encountered enormous odds, heartbreaking challenges, pitfalls, intrigues, disappointments, betrayals, never-ending friendships, forever lessons, key decisions, eye-openers. Musila has seen the darkest hours of his country, and polished his leadership skills over the years.
A young administrator of the age when Kenya gained independence, the times when Kenya was seeing a sunrise, he gained experience and stature from the ranks of District Officer to Provincial Commissioner. It was a critical time for the country, with the history being rewritten, colonial settlers were in retreat, in fear, in anger, in disbelief, for indigenous Kenyans were in charge.
The book delves deep into his extraordinary life, from his birth in a colonial Kenya to his studies in the USA to his starting to serve the country and cuts across the reign of four Presidents. While writing his memoir, Musila has shown utmost honesty, and has often talked of things that were talked of only in hush-hush voices or rather never talked of!
Musila's first assignment was to address the thorny issue of land and resettlement in the independent Kenya, which he performed so well that many new challenges were confidently thrown at him, which he gracefully accepted. Alert, observant, keen, good listener, record maintaining, he learnt all that well, but politics is all together a different set of challenge, which becomes disheartening at times.
While he already the best upbringing behind him, he also earned himself the best mentors, combining the two made many people jealous even as several tried to pull him down. Land adjudication and resettlement; peace-making with the then ruling party, KANU; unabashedly serving Kenyans in various capacities, have been few of the highlights of his carrier.
Beyond everything, Musila went on to perform every duty well; as a human, a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a Public Administrator, a leader, peace makers. With David Musila Foundation, he has started working against the grassroot of all issues... lack of education and support to those who really need it to understand their needs towards growth.
Imperial Reckoning The Untold Story o...
Brief Summary
Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of one-and-a half-million - to hold them in camps or confine them in villages ringed with barbed wire - and to portray them as sub-human savages.
From 1952 until the end of the war in 1960 tens of thousands of detainees - and possibly a hundred thousand or more - died from the combined effects of exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. Until now these events have remained untold, largely because the British government in Kenya destroyed most of its files. For the last eight years Caroline Elkins has conducted exhaustive research to piece together the story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors.
Britain's Gulag reveals what happened inside Kenya's detention camps, as well as the efforts to conceal the truth. Now, for the first time, we can understand the full savagery of the Mau Mau war and the ruthless determination with which Britain sought to control its empire.
ISBN:9780805080018
Author: Caroline Elkins
Mukami Kimathi Mau Mau Women Freedom ...
In 1964, a newly independent Kenya was facing the uphill task of reconstructing herself into an African State. That reconstruction was called "Africanisation”.
As part of the Africanisation policy, my father, Vincent Nderitu, was posted to Sasumua Dam in Kinangop to take over from the British superintendents who were leaving the country.
Not long after he had arrived, he asked the foreman, Harun Musungu, to find out where he could buy milk. That was how he met Mukami Kimathi. My father was thunderstruck. Back home in Tetu, Nyeri, his home and Mukami’s were within a walking distance. My father knew her as a legend. She was a Mau Mau heroine, the wife of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi.
My father began treating Mukami like an elder sister, fixing her fences and installing a water tank for her among other duties. When I was growing up, Mukami was the auntie through whose home we passed on our way from school; the one who made my brothers and I porridge and gave us red plums. She was not a blood relative, but we always thought she was.
Mukami and her children, Nyambura and Waceke, would often come to our home in the afternoons and I would read the newspaper to her haltingly. She encouraged me saying; "When you grow up, you will write as well as you read. One day, you should write my karugano ( story) because what is not written is forgotten.”
She wanted me to remind Kenyans to take care of the country the Mau Mau fought for.
Her lowest point was the 2007-2008 post-election violence and often said: "Because we fought the colonialists, Kenyans now have arrow roots, sweet potatoes, bananas and yam on the table. But instead of eating, they are fighting! I wish this generation of Kenyans from all ethnic communities would rally as we did and this time emerge with, instead of independence like we did, national unity!
In her story, Mukami shows us who Dedan Kimathi was as a father and husband. Her experiences provide an important complement to existing written records on Kenya’s history.
Mukami Kimathi’s prophesy that I would write her karugan is now a reality. The book, Mukami Kimathi: Mau Mau Freedom Fighter, was launched at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi last evening. She was also proved right on another front; my sister Consolata Wakonyo became a pilot.
Looters and Grabbers by Joe Khamisi
This book is about unbridled corruption, bribery and scandalous financial skullduggery in one of Africa's most promising countries, Kenya.
It is a narrative of money-laundering, mega scandals, and international wheeler-dealing, and describes how Mafia-like lobbyists have been devouring the country's resources with blatant impunity over four regimes since independence in 1963.
It is an important resource for historians, students, researchers, social and political scientists, non-governmental organizations, development and anti-corruption agencies.
Digital Democracy Analogue Politics H...
From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa.
While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life.
Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive.
Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how ‘fake news’, a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections.
Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola’s ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.
Pio Gama Pinto Untold Life Story of F...
Pio Gama Pinto: Kenya’s Unsung Martyr 1927– 1965 is edited by Shiraz Durrani and includes letters, recollections from family and comrades and newspaper articles. Shortly after independence, Pinto was shot dead outside his Westlands home (where Sarit Centre is). He was 38. That his two-year-old daughter was in the car with him or that it was broad daylight did not deter the assassins -- they were determined to eliminate him.
One stark reason to finish him, it has been argued over the years, was the fact that he was a hardcore socialist caught in the cross-hairs of neo-imperialists hell-bent on directing Kenya the capitalistic way. The 2013 report by the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation (TJRC) said his death was motivated by "ideological differences at the heart of the global cold war but also mirrored in domestic politics.”
Three men were nabbed in connection with the murder. TJRC said those arrested were "scapegoats” meant to divert attention from the real killers. Fingers were pointed at the government led by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. One of his closest friends Achieng’ Oneko, on learning about his death, would shout: "No, no, no! Kenyatta must explain! He must explain!” Kenya’s second Vice President Joseph Murumbi, also a dear friend, was the most distraught and in tears after learning of his death (Murumbi is quoted saying that Pintomade him join politics).
Two weeks earlier, Pinto had been tipped that there was a plot to murder him alongside Bildad Kaggia and JD Kali due to their "secret anti-Government” activities. But did Kenyatta have a hand in Pinto’s death? Pinto after all, had fought for Kenyatta’s release from detention. The book suggests that his assassination needs to be seen in its "overall national and international” context.
Durrani quotes authors who have tied his death to that of slain US black rights activist Malcolm X. The two met when Malcolm visited Kenya in 1959.
Pinto was active in the fight against colonialism as well as neo-colonialism in the post-independence struggle and was targeted by colonial Portuguese Goan and British Kenyan administrations. The post-independence ruling elite ultimately silenced him. "The bullets that killed Pinto may have been fired or organized by the former home guards, now the new power brokers, but their foreign backers were the real instigators of his assassination,” writes Durrani.
Pinto gave away almost all his money and not even his wife Emma, knew how much he earned. As secretary of the Pan African press, Pinto used to tell his wife that his salary was half of what he earned and gave out the other half to the poor.
According to Murumbi, he didn’t own a house and was very reluctant when it was suggested. When Pinto died, poor people from all over went to his house. "It was really pathetic to see elderly Kikuyu weeping for a man who had helped them, a man who was their colleague in detention and a man who had never forgotten them,” said Murumbi. After his death, Murumbi arranged for Emma to immigrate to Canada where they became citizens. Now 90, Emma describes Pinto as a "humanist.” The author says the book has been in the works since the 1980s and blames unfavourable political climate for the cancellations and delays on any work on Pinto.
The Big Conservation Lie: The Untold ...
The Big Conservation Lie' is a wakeup call focused on a field that has been 'front and center' of many people's hearts and minds in recent years; the conservation of Africa's wildlife. It is a pursuit whose power to inspire is only rivalled by its ability to blind its audience to reality.
This book takes the reader through Kenya's conservation 'industry' and the players therein with all their prejudices, weaknesses and commitment to causes, many of which are indistinguishable from their personalities.
It is a call to indigenous Africans to claim their place at the table where the management of their natural resources is being discussed and invites well-meaning donors to look beyond the romantic images and detect the possible role of their money in the disenfranchisement of a people.
Fighting the Mau Mau The British Army...
Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency
British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonization wars.
For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship between notions of minimum force and the colonial tradition of exemplary force where harsh repression was frequently employed as a valid means of quickly crushing rebellion.
Although a range of restrained policies such as Special Forces methods, restrictive rules of engagement and surrender schemes prevented the campaign from degenerating into genocide, the army simultaneously coerced the population to drop their support for the rebels, imposing collective fines, mass detentions and frequent interrogations, often tolerating rape, indiscriminate killing and torture to terrorize the population into submission.
Kidneys for the King by Miguna Miguna
Kidneys for the King has a carefully developed structure. The first and the last chapter focus on the (de)construction of two public figures – Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
These two embodiments of the promise of radical transformation and their abysmal failures frame Miguna’s exposition of the trouble with Kenya in chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Against the background of the reception of Peeling Back the Mask in the local and international press; on television and on the Internet, Miguna details the rot of our society. A polluted police force; rampant corruption; the vagaries of an irresponsible media; a vile political culture; wayward leaders, a gullible electorate and the truant, half-hearted attempts at implementing a progressive Constitution.
Kenya Between Hope and Despair 1963-2...
On December 12, 1963, people across Kenya joyfully celebrated independence from British colonial rule, anticipating a bright future of prosperity and social justice. As the nation approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, however, the people's dream remains elusive.
During its first five decades Kenya has experienced assassinations, riots, coup attempts, ethnic violence, and political corruption. The ranks of the disaffected, the unemployed, and the poor have multiplied. In this authoritative and insightful account of Kenya's history from 1963 to the present day, Daniel Branch sheds new light on the nation's struggles and the complicated causes behind them.
Branch describes how Kenya constructed itself as a state and how ethnicity has proved a powerful force in national politics from the start, as have disorder and violence. He explores such divisive political issues as the needs of the landless poor, international relations with Britain and with the Cold War superpowers, and the direction of economic development.
Tracing an escalation of government corruption over time, the author brings his discussion to the present, paying particular attention to the rigged election of 2007, the subsequent compromise government, and Kenya's prospects as a still-evolving independent state.
The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a ...
Brief Summary
The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator
In this provocative treatise, author Joe Khamisi catalogues the events that took place during one of Kenya's most important periods in history. This period began in 2002, when Daniel Arap Moi stepped down after twenty-four years as president of Kenya.
Khamisi reviews events up to the time when the country exploded in post-election violence in 2007 and the subsequent formation of the Grand Coalition Government between President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Amolo Odinga the following year.
Khamisi explores the leadership betrayals that he believes are responsible for the political, social, and economic rot that are pervasive in Kenya. He recounts how he helped a presidential poll loser in the 2007 elections, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, capture the coveted role of vice president.
He also presents an in-depth analysis of Senator Barack Obama's visit to Kenya in 2006, as well as his own personal experiences with Barack's late father, who he describes as a person who "chain-smoked contentedly, drank copiously, and partied spiritedly." The Politics of Betrayal is critical reading for anyone who is interested in the transformation of Kenya from a one-party dictatorship to a pluralistic nation.
The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rab...
Brief summary
The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rabai and Freretown Slave Settlements.
This book is about the 19th century slave trade in Eastern and Central Africa. No one in the history of humankind has suffered the indignity, abuse and pain of slavery than the African. Over many centuries, millions of Africans were uprooted from their quaint villages in the interior of the "Dark Continent" and taken into slavery.
They were exported to the Americas, Asia, Arabia and a dozen other countries around the globe, to work in plantations, in the pearl industry, and as soldiers and domestic workers. Boys were castrated and made eunuchs and girls were sexually abused and forced into harems. Unfortunately, the African slave narrative - written mostly by Western historians and missionaries - has been contemptibly distorted to portray Europeans as the gallant saviors, the notorious slave traders as swaggering heroes, and the African captives as wretched victims of a horrible but regrettably inevitable human phenomenon of the time.
The truth has been loftily garbled or masked and the role of liberated Africans vastly under-represented. The Wretched Africans peels of what is beneath the Arab slave trade, unravels the racism and abuse meted against Africans by European explorers and missionaries, and lays bare the heroism and resilience of the African captives. It memorializes Africans who died in caravan trails, at sea and those who found freedom in slave settlements around the world. It is a must read for historians, researchers, students and the general public wanting to understand the truth about what happened to an estimated eleven million people taken captive from the east coast of Africa to the new world and beyond.